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I’m Bob Larson. Royal Dairy and the Washington State Dairy Products Commission hosted a ribbon cutting ceremony last week for their new BioFiltro wastewater treatment system.

Royal Dairy owner Austin Allred says they are accountable for every ounce of water used on their 7,000 milking cow-operation …

AUSTIN ALLRED ... “So, we put all that water through a centrifuge system which separates the solids from the liquids, the best it can. And then, after that centrifuge the water will then go through this biofilter treatment system which is a biological filtration system where the water is sprinkled on top. It settles through this BIDA, the technical term, system and it comes out the bottom back to irrigation water that we then put back on the fields and irrigate with.”

Allred says besides the contaminants; the system also removes some big challenges …

AUSTIN ALLRED … “Handling this “green-water”. You have to have lots of land to do it right. It’s expensive to truck it, probably one of the biggest challenges in the industry right now. It’s very highly regulated, so by pulling out the nutrients and having irrigation water, it solves a big problem in the industry right now. And then if you combine greenhouse gas reduction, that solves another issue that’s down the pipeline.”

Listen tomorrow for more on this innovative BioFiltro system that removes an average of 93% of Total Nitrogen, 97% of Suspended Solids, and 90% of Phosphorus from wastewater.